SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ABBEY MASONBRINK – RISING

ABBEY MASONBRINK
RISING
INDEPENDENT

Basing your music mainly on your vocals and banjo, might not be so unusual if your songs fall solely in the folk or bluegrass genres, but Kansas singer songwriter Abbey Masonbrink doesn’t think that should be the case on her simply titled album Rising.

And why the album title and the instrumentation list might indicate musical simplicity (banjo, bass, violin, sparse percussion), Masonbrink’s songwriting and her music as such is so far away from being simple, just one listen to “Smoke Rising” or the trickily spaced-out title track and you become aware that this just might be a quite intriguing, left-field take on folk and bluegrass, Masonbrink bringing in elements from elsewhere as she pleases, but with such an elegant touch that they fit within her music exactly as they should.

It will be great to see and hear where she goes on from here.

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